As ever, this time of year is when people look back over what has happened in the previous year and forward to what they think will happen in the New Year.

While Im not a great one for New Year Resolutions, I thought that I would add my own thoughts as to some of the trends that I believe we will be looking at in the arena of business blogging and social media.

In no particular order:

1. Blog Integration: Blogs will become more integrated with standard websites and indeed the norm will be to have the interactive elements of a blog for specific purposes as part of more and more sites.

2. Small Business Blogs: Small Businesses will recognise that simply starting up a static website will not provide them with the online presence and communication tool that they require. Those small businesses wishing to make an impact will move their current website on to a blog platform and will lead the way in this area.

3. Internal blogs: Dark blogs (or internal blogs) will step out into the light. Having used blogging as internal communications tools, larger companies will build on that experience to start to incorporate externally customer focused blogs into their customer relations programs. Smaller companies will start to use internal blogs more extensively as a central information and communication resource.

4. Corporate Blogs: The FTSE 250 will see over 15 externally facing blogs set up as corporate organisations start to realise and explore the different options that business blogs offer them.

5. Social Media: In the UK, there will become a greater acceptance and use of the social media tools that are available. In the second half of the year, we will see social media toolkits becoming an increasingly important part of a companys online marketing activities.

6. Old ideas will persist: Nevertheless, people will continue to explain how to use business blogs by starting with the phrase blogs are an online diary. Alas!

7. Social Bookmarking: social bookmarking will spread outside of the primarily technical audience that it currently serves and be used more extensively. There will also be the first steps in consolidation within this area creating fewer independent and viable players.

8. RSS: the use of RSS will continue to gain ground outside of the current user base. This will develop the very specific RSS channels though is dependent on the benefits being more clearly explained and communicated by those already using it.

9. User generated content: the trend will continue but will expand from the mega site focus down to the smaller individual sites and blogs which will create strong micro communities in industry and market segments.